The streets were entirely quiet, apart from the bustle of soldiers and servants. They saw more than a few serving women hurriedly moving to fill buckets with water from the well, and then dashing back towards the keep at the back of the fortress. Unlike in many of the castles that Vol had heard of, here the keep wasn't in the centre. It was instead positioned closer to the back wall, where it was safer, because of the sheer drop of a cliff behind it, and the impossibility of staging an attack from that direction.
Over their shoulders, they could hear a group of soldiers making quiet conversation as they trailed behind them. There were ten of them in total. The soldier at the gate had made good on his word in that. But they kept a respectful distance of several metres, so they weren't anything of an inconvenience.
